My Mother's Keeper

Nancy Gerber writes, "When my mother told me she'd had three children, at first I thought, 'There goes the Alzheimer's again.' But then I remembered: my father had badly wanted three children, and in between my birth and my brother's, there had been a miscarriage. A lost child.

As my mother's ability to relate to the world around her became more and more fragmented, I would look to these gleanings as a way to form some kind of connection between us to replace what was rapidly slipping away. Even so, I was not really comforted by what I learned from the delusions, for I wanted all of my mother, not just what was left of her memory."

Gerber's story My Mother's Keeper, is a thoughtfully written, powerful account of her experience of the early stages of her mother's dementia.

I recommend this book to anyone seeking to cope with the acknowledgment that a loved one has Alzheimer's or related dementia. Along with Gerber's prose are photographs by Joan and John Digby that highlight the story. You may find out more about the book by writing:

The Feral Press
P.O. Box 358
Oyster Bay, New York, 11771

or

www.pp-pub.com

Nancy Gerber is a mother, daughter, and writer with a doctorate in English from Rutgers University. She is the author of two books: Portrait of the Mother-Artist: Class and Creativity in Contemporary American Fiction (Lexington, 2003) and Losing a Life: A Daughter's Memoir of Caregiving (Hamilton, 2005). Currently she is enrolled in an analytic training program at the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis in Livingston, New Jersey.